Yesterday I went on my first proper church crawl since the first lockdown [March 2020] but inadvertently started off with two churches I had previously visited in February 2020, Copdock and Belstead [both LNK], and so abandoned my list and followed my nose which led me to St Nicholas [open].
An attractive building with some good glass, two great corbels, a monument for Thomas, d.1593, and Nicholas Tymperley and an outstanding, what I took to be, brass to, their respectively grandson and son, John Timperley d. 1629. All in all a good restart to the trip.
ST NICHOLAS. E. E. arcades of four bays. The piers are circular-octagonal-circular on the S side, octagonal-circular-octagonal on the N. Double-chamfered arches. Dec S aisle and chancel, Perp W tower and clerestory. Perp timber S porch. The N side is much simpler than the S side. - COMMUNION RAIL. With twisted balusters. - PANELLING. Against the E wall. Perp and crested, which made Cautley suppose that it was originally the rood-loft parapet. - PAINTING. Fragment of a St Christopher in the nave opposite the S entrance. - MONUMENTS. Thomas Tympley d. I593 and his wife and his son’s family. The son’s date of death is not entered. Two groups of small kneeling figures in the usual arrangement across prayer-desks. - Capt. John Timperley d. 1629. A fine, elegant, upright figure, engraved on a large slate plate. The figure has an engraved architectural frame with tympanum and trophies l. and r.
HINTLESHAM. A charming village it is, with many trees and attractive cottages, and the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil; we could hear it as we sat in church. An avenue of limes leads to the Elizabethan great house, the home of the Timperleys, whose monument is one of the delights of Hintlesham.
The church, with a lovely exterior, has a fine flint embattled tower with two grotesque gargoyles, and is mostly 600 years old; but the nave arcades, several windows, a doorway, and a piscina are all 13th century. The clerestory windows are 15th. It is a spacious and aged-looking place with plain walls and a chancel as wide as the nave. Across the chancel is a beam resting on corbels of men with their tongues out, and on the north wall of the nave are traces of painting. There is an old oak door leading to the vestry, and two windows of the north aisle have fragments of 15th century glass. An unusual feature here is the very high and winding rood-stairway with 18 steps.
There are memorials of the Timperleys from 1558 till our own time. One of them was rector in the dark reign of Mary Tudor, and here by the altar rails is a family group of them from the same century, kneeling figures carved in alabaster. Thomas Timperley of 1593 is facing his wife at a desk, with a son and eight daughters behind them; and Nicholas is kneeling with his wife Anna, with their six sons and eight daughters squeezed behind them. Across the chancel is a big marble tablet engraved with a 17th century portrait of John Timperley in armour.
A familiar figure of Hintlesham was the striking personality of Mr Havelock Ellis, the famous psychologist and essayist, who died herein 1939. A sea captain’s son, he went out to Australia in his father’s ship in the seventies of last century, and came home after a few years intent on devoting himself to literature and the psychology of sex. He fought battle after battle on matters which stirred a sensitive public opinion, but persisted in pursuing his ideals and produced a great number of books on all phases of sex. He was a poet, too, and a beautiful writer; and a good friend when his shyness and the “awe-inspiring nobility of his head and face” were overcome. He said of himself that he desired no finer epitaph than that he had added a little to the sweetness of the world and a little to its light.
No comments:
Post a Comment